Journal

Rorschach

It’s like a Rorschach test, this image by Joe Giddens for the Press Association that went viral over the weekend. It tells you everything you need to know about yourself. One of these people is defending British values in the face of something horrible. You get to decide which one.

The English Defence League is a ragtag splat of incoherent racists who like to assemble in frightened xenophobic huddles whenever something happens which could loosely fit their neanderthal agenda. They formed one such huddle in Birmingham on Saturday, having been scared from their homes by the recent attack in Westminster, so that they could tremble and hug one another in the media’s glare.

According to Saffiyah Khan, pictured, she stepped in when another woman who had called the weeping subnormals ‘Islamaphobes’ ended up surrounded by the gentlemen of the EDL, who perhaps wished to discuss with her their difference in opinion. When she stepped in to offer the woman some support they surrounded her instead, at which moment the picture was taken. She wasn’t part of a counter protest, she says, but was just passing.

According to the mewling cretins of the EDL, she interrupted a minute’s silence for the victims of the Stockholm attack last week. That doesn’t seem to tie in with anybody else’s account – at least, nobody on record so far recalls them announcing a minute’s silence and standing in sombre, silent concentration, hats in hand, before she arrived. It doesn’t quite jibe with the later comment by EDL leader Ian Crossland, also pictured, who posted “The dirty unwashed left-wing scrubber was grinning because she managed to disrupt a demo…she’s lucky she got any teeth left”

Far be it from me to say which version of events is true. I wasn’t there.

The picture was taken in Birmingham, which President Trump believes is a muslim controlled no-go zone where God-fearing white folks will be butchered and eaten if they enter.

Anyway, there you have it. British values on display.

Unfortunately there are two people in the picture, and both fit that description. You can choose which one you want to be though. It’s pretty black and white, not much room for shades of grey or ‘yeah buts’. I’d go so far as to say that if you have any quibbles, any doubts at all, even little ones at the back of your mind, then you need to stop there. You’ve decided, and might need to take a good long look at yourself if you feel uncomfortable about that.

Anyway, thanks social mediaz. I don’t often have any reason to be grateful for you being a thing, but you put that image in front of me, and so we can be friends again.